


Earth-One

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19864597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: "Excuse me, ma'am," she says, to the figure sitting up in the hospital bed. "You're supposed to be dead."(Alex gets a strange visitor from another planet.)





	Earth-One

Alex Danvers, head of the only metahuman clinic in Central City, is not having the most normal day of her life. Not that any day is a normal day, in a career dedicated to dealing with metahumans and everything they get up to.

Even so, it's extra not-normal for a patient that had been proclaimed dead to wake up in the middle of an examination, and ask "Why are there wires sticking out of my body?"

\---

"She washed up on the beach last night," Vasquez had said briefly that morning, before passing the clipboard to Alex. "Looks like she'd sustained major injuries, but was still alive when she went underwater. The drowning did the rest of the job. I don't think we can help this one, boss."

It might have been a dead body on the bed in the ward that Alex walked into, but it still needed a proper inspection before a death certificate could be signed, so Alex had set about it. It should have been a routine procedure, and it had been.

Right up until when she'd turned away to check the vital signs monitor one final time, and turned back to see the body sitting up on the hospital bed, looking around it with a bemused air.

\---

Someone new to this job would scream. Alex isn't new to the job, so she merely starts and lets out a small gasp, before common sense returns.

"Excuse me, ma'am," she says, to the figure sitting up in the hospital bed. "You're supposed to be dead."

Her patient raises imperious eyebrows. "I'm not dead. I'm Astra."

Alex stares. "What?"

"My name is Astra," Astra says, sitting up in the bed, and crossing her legs, before she turns to watch Alex. "But, you knew that already."

"You were dead!" Alex protests, whirling around to check the monitors again, which are now beeping healthily, showing signs of an exceptionally fit individual. "I checked your stats myself. Not even a metahuman can come back from death."

"I am not a human."

Alex turns around.

"That's what I said," she says slowly, wondering if there'd been more internal damage than she had realized. "Metahuman."

The patient shakes her head.

"I don't understand what that means."

Alex stares at her.

"You were dead," she says. "I checked your pulse. There was nothing there."

Astra waves a dismissive hand at that. "Kryptonians evolved beyond such simple biology. Our bodies are much hardier than that of any human's."

Her tone isn't arrogant, exactly, but of one who takes a matter as a given fact.

Alex can't help but stare at her again. "Crypto-what?"

That seems to give Astra pause, and she looks at Alex as if seeing her anew. "Where am I?"

"You're in Central City," Alex says, after a beat. "I'm Alex Danvers, the head doctor of the metahuman clinic here. You were dead when we wheeled you in. That's what we thought, anyway. There were no vital signs."

"Central City?" Astra looks puzzled. "I'm not in National City?"

"Come again?" Alex asks.

"Central City," Astra recites, as if reading off something she'd memorized off a pamphlet. "Home of The Flash, the Cougars, and the Big Belly Burger. I remember my niece telling me that."

"Um," Alex says, feeling quite surreal. "I suppose so? The Flash doesn't come by here that often, though. He's got his own team, I think."

"You have no Superman in this world, then," Astra surmises.

"Superman?" Alex wrinkles her nose. "I'm pretty sure I know every metahuman zapping around the city, and I've never heard of a Superman."

"But, that means-"

Suddenly, Astra looks truly shaken, in a way she hadn't looked when informed that she had been dead when brought into the clinic.

"That means Krypton was never destroyed in your universe," she continues.

Alex blinks. "What?"

Astra shakes her head.

"I don't understand," she says.

"That makes two of us," Alex says, but the advantage of running this clinic for seven years is that she can take just about any curveball lobbed at her. She sits down by Astra's bed. "Talk to me. What's Crypton, and what do you mean it wasn't destroyed?"

Astra shakes her head.

"Krypton was my home planet," she murmurs, running shaking fingers through her unruly mass of hair. Alex absentmindedly wonders about the strange white streak in it. "It was destroyed. At least, I thought it was. Not, it  _ is. _ "

Alex blinks, feeling overwhelmed at the sudden assault of information. But Astra looks more shocked than her, if anything, as she processes her own words.

"There's a universe in which Krypton was never destroyed."

The knowledge of that seems to overcome every other thought, because Astra sits motionless on the bed, staring mutely down at her splayed fingers, for many moments. Alex thinks she might be on the verge of crying. 

For her own part, Alex stays quiet, running the new information through her head. Truth be told, what little she knows about aliens concerns the Dominators, who aren't exactly a species deserving of the welcome wagon.

This woman on the bed, with her head bowed, looks very different from that.

"I have to return to my universe," Astra murmurs eventually, looking back up. Her face is back to its unmoved countenance, again.

Alex frowns.

"Hang on," she says. "If your planet was destroyed in your universe, where do you live?"

Astra's mouth quirks up a little, as if she's amused despite herself. "In my universe, Earth is a haven for alien refugees from many galaxies."

"Huh," Alex states. It's not a question.

"And then I tried to take it over," Astra says, blandly.

"Excuse me?" Alex stares at the woman, wondering if this is some elaborate prank that her coworkers have set up.

"You have nothing to worry about," Astra says, continuing in that bland tone. "As it happens, I was almost murdered before I could succeed, and declined to pursue the matter again after I was resurrected."

"This is a joke, isn't it?" Alex asks. "Vasquez put you up to this. I guess she wanted to get back at me for assigning her the night shift for this week."

Astra stares at her as if  _ she's  _ the one not making any sense.

"I understand it can be hard to accept," she says after a while, in a tone as if talking to a child. "You don't need to worry about any of it, regardless, as I'll be leaving soon."

"You're not leaving," Alex says automatically. "You're injured."

"Not any longer," Astra says.

She rips off the wires connected to her, as if their removal doesn't hurt the slightest bit, and swings her legs off the side of the bed. Alex thinks she's going to jump down, but Astra stays there, studying Alex through half-lidded eyes.

"This is what you do with your life?" she asks. "Taking care of these... metahumans?"

"Yes?" Alex says, bemused. "Why?"

"You could have found work at a regular hospital instead," Astra says. "I'm sure the work is easier, and pays better."

"My father passed the clinic on to me," Alex says, shrugging. "Besides, someone has to take care of them, seeing as the general hospital won't accept metahumans into their critical wards. They think it's too risky."

"And do you?"

Alex shrugs. "It's more interesting, for sure. I got to meet a dragon once."

She can feel herself heating up, because the way Astra is looking at her is certainly not the way a stranger looks at another, or a patient at a doctor. There's a warm fondness in them that's somehow suffusing through Alex's chest too.

"You're a remarkable human in every world, Alex Danvers," Astra says eventually.

Alex is too busy blushing at first over the compliment, that the full meaning of it doesn't sink in for a few moments.

"In every world?" she repeats. "That means... you know me, in your Earth?"

Astra smiles, but doesn't answer.

"I guess you can't confirm that," Alex says. Stupidly, she feels some reason to scuff her heels, when Astra keeps smiling at her.

Astra finally breaks eye contact and jumps down.

"I have to go now," she says. "I was supposed to be back at the DEO as soon as I retrieved the Omegahedron. The detour with the multiverse portals was... unexpected."

"I understood only half of what you just said," Alex says, feeling strangely disappointed as Astra strides to the exit.

Astra smiles in that subtle way again, and doesn't reply to that, either. Alex wonders how she expects to make her way back, with no apparent vehicle on hand, but that's not what seems to be concerning Astra. Instead, she seems a little hesitant to leave if anything, seeming to share some of Alex's disappointment at her departure.

"Hey," Alex says, throwing caution to the wind.

Astra looks back.

"There's a telescope at the Thorul Observatory," Alex says, feeling a little awkward. "It's supposed to be one of the most powerful ones in the world. I can drive you there... if you want to look at Crypton, I mean. We could stop by a Big Belly Burger on the way, too."

Astra looks wrecked, ass soon as her words set in. Alex realizes that maybe her offer had not been a kind one, after all.

"I think not," Astra says, after a clear internal struggle. "It would be best if I didn't."

Alex nods. 

"Right," she says. "Fine."

Feeling stupid, she gives a small wave towards Astra. She'd just wanted to do something for her, something that could be remembered. Instead, it looks like she's brought up some repressed trauma to the surface.

Before Alex can begin to beat herself up over messing that up, Alex tosses something to her. Alex catches it out of the air, and stares at the sphere in her hand, which lights up when it makes contact with her fingers.

"What's this?" she asks, looking back up at Astra.

"It's called a spy beacon," Astra explains. "If you ever need help, press on it. I or my niece will come to your aid."

Alex blinks, and looks down at the device.

"Oh," she says, her throat tightening up oddly.

"It's quite handy, if this universe's version of me ever shows up and tries to take over your Earth," Astra adds.

Alex squints, still unable to make out if she's lying about that. Astra's face remains as grave as, well, the dead. Alex gives it up as a lost cause.

"Thanks," she says.

Astra nods. She seems at peace now, her hesitation at leaving having vanished.

"Goodbye, Alex Danvers."

Alex puts the spy beacon away into the pocket of her lab coat, looking down to make sure it gets tucked away securely. There's a slight breeze. By the time she looks back up, Astra is no longer there, vanished as if into thin air.

"Goodbye?" Alex says out loud, knowing it probably won't be heard, but feeling rude at the thought of it being left unsaid.

The sphere is heavy in her coat. Alex reaches down to pat it, before shaking her head and picking her clipboard back up again. Ticking off the first row on the list, she walks to the next ward in the clinic.

\---


End file.
